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Top 5 Web Design & Development Tools,

Web development & design has moved on at an alarming rate, and will continue to well into the future, so keeping up with the latest features and best tools for the job can be tricky at the best of times, especially for new people coming into the trade. As you may have guessed the following is a list of the best tools:

5. Adobe Flash
User interaction has become a massive area with web 2.0, flash pretty much enables you to turn you most imaginative designs into life and with the growing library of components available online, you don’t need to have an in-depth knowledge of action script to achieve some tremendous results.

4. Dreamweaver
Pretty much every designer these days has “access” to a version of the adobe suite. There is good reason for this too, it is simply the best around, especially when used in conjunction with the other elements of the adobe suite.
Its featured-packed suite of tools and options include: syntax highlighting and very smart Code Hinting, built-in FTP client, project management and workflow options that make team work effortless, and Live View - which shows you a preview of your source code

3. Fireworks
Fireworks is a really a dream, both to design with and to begin the initial development stages. Targeted for web designers, Fireworks delivers a staggering number of intuitive tools and options, making designing a prototype page a real breeze.
Perhaps fireworks’ best tool is the slicing tool, enabling you to mock-up a prototype design to fire off to your client within minutes. The image optimisation built into fireworks is simply incredible, creating detailed yet lightweight graphics.

2. Photoshop
We all knew this application would appear in this list at some point, Photoshop delivers to the highest levels, and with the latest CS4 release, becomes almost untouchable. The advanced 3D image and object manipulation is something to behold, really it is that good.
Created for professional photographers it is the perfect application for anything from simple image editing, to advanced image manipulation. The sheer amount of tutorials available for this application means that even the most computer illiterate of users should be able to use this application and achieve fantastic results.

1. Firefox & plug-ins
The inclusion of the browser may baffle a few people, as it is not really a tool, but there is good reason for this. Firefox has an abundant resource for plug-ins specifically targeted for web designers and developers. It makes debugging and developing your code as painless and as comfortable as possible. Just take a look here and see how customisable this browser really is… It’s fantastic & FREE!

Honourable mention - Notepad++
For times when notepad just isn’t good enough, a brilliant little application for on the fly editing and little updates. Includes colour code mark-up just like Dreamweaver, but its FREE!